FriendOfDeSoto

I think there are many sliding scales that apply simultaneously. One is age. I used to look forward to this sort of thing when I was a kid and the enthusiasm has decreased since then at the pace of a falling parabola. To a point where I moved far away. Number of certifiable assholes present is another one. If you can hide with the good guys, it’s okay. If there is no way to escape, it sucks. These days are held to please that part of the family which is closer to death of natural causes. So another sliding scale is how much do you want to please your elders. How is the food? That might be worth it alone. And as a last example, how much do you like your relatives? Configure these sliders and you get your opinion. Anything from absolutely hating it to loving every minute is possible and no opinion wrong.

Sloppy slop slop

Does he wear a watch now? Does he ever take it off? Snap a picture top down on its side and put a ruler in the picture for reference. Measure the watch circumference with a piece of string and then flatten it out on a ruler. Keep the string by the bed and wait for him to fall asleep and measure his wrist like that. Suggest using handcuffs in the bedroom and surreptitiously measure the wrist that way.

Somebody else suggested you measure everything about him. Waist, legs, cuffs, etc. That’s a good idea as well.

The flooding the zone strategy. Very good!

The simplest answer to this why question is that them’s the rules.

A tariff is also different from a sales tax. One doesn’t preclude the other. I’m sure there are places in the US where you would end up paying both. The tariffs are a federal instrument of regulating cross border trade. Sales tax or the lack thereof is a state decision.

Armed with that philosophy, you stand at a fork in the road. You can become a Buddhist, a hedonist, or an anarchist. Choose your path wisely.

From a sentimental point of view, why not both? However:

Define Nazism and how banning it might be alright with the 1st amendment.

There is already a law that compels the AG to release the files. The department is still under republican control. The only thing that will change is that the committees trying to shine some light on the matter have more teeth. Keep in mind though that there may be democrat corpses in Jeffrey’s cupboard and birds of a feather flock together, even among democrats.

They could get to work on stiffening penalties for sexual predators and their helpers. As well as going after those officials who in the past have turned blind eyes towards these cases in spite of evidence. A lot of that is on state level though.

Temper your expectations. This blue wave is great but anything they want to do runs into 47 breakwater until he’s out.

I think “believe” is maybe the wrong word. I’ve dealt with a few medical professionals and I’ve come to the conclusion that they are mostly just like you and me, unsure of what’s going on, but armed with more helpful niche knowledge and the pretense they know everything. They have come up through a process of learning that leans heavily on the scientific method. Shit needs to be verifiable. That is not to say that none of them act on hunches. But these are mostly hunches they have a body of experience for. Many psychological conditions are hard to diagnose. They can’t check the liver stats or x-ray the ankle as an indicator. They also know mental care is underfunded and understaffed in most places. So I don’t think it’s a question of believing these conditions exist, it’s more about weighing a lot of these factors in their heads and the result of that may be that fewer cases get recognised.

That’s not necessarily a ding on politicians. Representative democracy requires a political meat grinder that few people get out of still mostly intact. Those are the candidates you get to vote on. It takes a certain kind of person to survive the meat grinder long enough to be on a ballot. There are 350 million people in the US, for instance. There are maybe a half million people seeking office from local to federal. That’s about .15 percent of the entire population. It’s a sheer numbers game that you haven’t voted for anyone you liked.

Many good people don’t want to enter the meat grinder in the first place, skewing the result further. That’s why democracy is mostly about voting for the least bad.

I fear if you tally up the environmental impact of war, which is more often than not the reason for the rising oil price, it may exceed the savings at the end consumer level.

Space is very cold. It’s -270something C. The temperature on Earth is much higher. The rays that make it through to our atmosphere bounce off the ground, warming it up from the bottom up. That’s why you need a jacket when you climb up a mountain because it’s getting colder the higher you go. Imagine a mountain higher than anything we have. Eventually, you’ll get to -50 C.

You are straining the credo of this community. Gauging general trust in engineers based on where the most popular PC operating system comes from is simply too simplistic.

Very few people use Microsoft products because they actually like them. They are just the market leader in desktop OSs and do their darnedest to keep people trapped in Office. Their market dominance is no reflection on trust.

None of this applies to all places necessarily:

Large distances in rural areas.

Stranger danger.

Everything is car focused in the US. The famous sentence “It’s 5 minutes on foot, let’s walk there.” has never been uttered.

Public transport may be shit or not suitably safe/reliable to get kids to school.

Big yellow buses have become a default, a cultural cornerstone, and many people rely on it and expect it.

Long traffic jams at schools are the sign of a more affluent population in the district.

I started getting uncontrolled erections whenever my sat nav told me where to go. Now I know that Knight Rider was to blame.

I offered an argument

That’s debatable. Thank you for rage baiting with us today.

Great use of the royal “we.”

Stickers can be forged. Checking your papers against a database is a lot more certain. The sticker is just there (or out of date) to justify pulling you over.

EU countries try really hard to register all births with the proper documents that then lead you to get an ID or passport later on in life. Everybody is used to needing an ID, being able to show it upon request, and using it to vote as well. Most people are just fine with all of that.

The US doesn’t follow this logic. For example, a person born earlier the last century in the deep south may not have received a birth certificate. The birth could have just been written into the household bible. So when you require a voter ID and to get that you need a birth certificate, you have eliminated a possible voter. And what if I added this bible practice was done predominantly in African-American communities. There will be other loopholes where people will be required to produce paperwork they can only acquire after a Kafkaesque tour through various administrations. Funny enough a lot of them affecting minority communities first and foremost.

If you want to do a proper voter ID, you need to first convince the people this isn’t government overreach (good luck). And then make sure everybody has an equal chance to get this ID, e.g. by issuing missing birth certificates. The laws that generally want to introduce this do not care about equal chances. They tend to target voters who vote for the other side.

To be fair, the courts didn’t order a transition. Nor could you say the poor man had much of a choice in the matter. Nor was he a Hannibal Lector type violent criminal, as far as I know.

What happened to Turing was reprehensible and wrong. His case is a good example to point at when decisions like this are forced upon unwilling people. OP doesn’t want to force this on anyone.